


Lord of Little Things

by PurpleMoon3



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: All the Subjects, F/M, Kid Fic, Mass Confusion, Other, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Resurrection, Time Travel, language barriers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2020-03-20 12:36:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18992791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleMoon3/pseuds/PurpleMoon3
Summary: When Desmond decides to activate the Eye and save everyone, he wanted to save Everyone.  The Defiance of Desmond goes down in history as the single most confusing case of Divine Intervention.





	1. Birthing Pangs

**Author's Note:**

> So, my original summary was: Desmond puts his hand on the Eye, and attempts to pull a Madoka. Opinions are mixed.
> 
> Then I thought not everyone is going to know Madoka Magica and it might make some people think this is a crossover. It is not. Don't expect any updates anytime soon. Mostly wrote this to get it out of my head. Basically BabyGod!Desmond trying to build an afterlife for Assassin's while a bunch of crazy time travelers fuck around Renaissance Italy. As I don't have specifics for a lot of the early Subjects there will be OCs.

** “You may take our lives this day, but we will have yours in return as well! I swear, we will!” **

Giovanni is full of rage when his feet drop out from under him. There is a familiar, brief moment of weightlessness accompanied by a vague recognition that stirs in his gut. He is a master assassin; and though he is skilled and careful Giovanni goes into every investigation, every mission, every _assassination_ knowing it may be his last. He came to terms with his own mortality years ago, in a ceremony lit by torchlight, and faced it again with every _Leap_.

The noose catches on his weight, pulls on his throat, and if it was just himself he could go gracefully. But it is his sons that stand beside him: Federico is but a novice, and Petruccio a _child_. The rage bubbles up, rendered impotent by the bindings at throat and hands, but in the crowd there is the flash of a blindingly white hood. Something inside Giovanni grins with sharp, bloody teeth.

Ezio, Giovanni thinks as his world is reduced to a fading gasp of air, is still free. And Ezio, unlike Giovanni, has the Gift. He will not be fooled by a history of false friendship.

It is that thought that is still in his mind when Giovanni shudders, blinking, and flips up off his back with a flexing of muscles that was much easier to do as a younger man. The first thing he notices, wary with lingering anger, are the pale lines of light that pulse off dark stone. It's unnatural, unsettling, and does almost nothing to illuminate the place he is in. There are pillars in the dark, seen only by the absence they make in the carpet of glowing lines.

The second thing Giovanni notices, partly from the stones leeching warmth from his feet, is his own nakedness. He swallows, hands clenching into fists as his mind races and his eyes strain, and it _hurts_.

Heaven, as the priests would say, is a place of peace. He would not feel the phantom pang of the rope if he were in Heaven, and yet, with the blood on his Assassin's hands he would think that Hell would mean _more_ hurt. Fire and Brimstone. Devils and Imps. And even his lingering anger at Uberto's betrayal cannot keep him warm in the darkness.

 _..._ Purgatory? 

A hazy black shadow eclipses the lines, and Giovanni starts walking, fingers flexing. It isn't just his neck that aches. His whole body feels like he just crawled out of bed after spending an entire day in the sparing ring with Mario. As he walks, he passes the pillars, and as if responding to his presence the dim glow of the carvings seems to brighten the slightest bit. His ears still echo with the roar of the jeering, blood thirsty crowd calling for his death, but in the absence of any other stimuli the muffled snuffling of hushed crying is  _loud_. 

It's important.

Giovanni turns on his heel and there is a pair of lumps leaning together. One of them, even in the dim light, is recognizable. Giovanni's voice comes out in an unrecognizable croak, “Petruccio?”

His youngest, just as naked as Giovanni himself, hides under the fall of his hair and presses skinny shoulders into the black stone. The younger boy by his side whips his head between the two Auditore before shrinking into himself and glaring at Giovanni suspiciously. Giovanni kneels down, one knee pressing into the chilling floor, and reaches out. The unknown child continues to glare at his hand, almost as if he would bite it. 

Giovanni sweeps his tongue around in his mouth, coughs, and tries to not sound like a corpse. “Petruccio, my son. Please, it is alright.”

Petruccio sniffles, looking up. “F-Father?” 

“Yes. Yes. It is me.”

“We died,” Petruccio breaks, his voice lacking the cheekiness he inherited from his brothers. Giovanni feels as though he is dying, again, and this time there is no rage to buoy him. “The Gonfaloniere, our friend, killed us.”

“Yes. I'm sorry, Petruccio.”

“Papa... was Messer Alberti right?”

Giovanni's eyes widen, and denials spill from him like water from a fountain as he sweeps his crying child into his arms. There is a dark, shallow pit encircling Petruccio's slender throat. It takes a lifetime of learned control to not give his son more bruises where his hands hold him tight. Petruccio was sickly more often than not, his neck would be easy to break, but he was such a slender build he might not have had the necessary weight. 

“Petro?” The other child asks sounding confused, and it takes Giovanni a moment to remember the other boy is still there and then another to realize that what he said was a name. His son's name, if mangled by a foreign tongue.

“Oh.” Petruccio blinks, wipes his eyes. He sounds ill, but he is trying, by god and all his absent angels, Petruccio is _trying_. Despite the horror of death and shame of nakedness, Maria's lessons on comportment shine through. “Papa, this is... Nicoli.”

The boy wrinkles his nose and enunciates, “Ni-ko-lai. Nikolai Sokolov.” 

“Nikolai.” Petruccio concedes with a nod. “This is my _Papa_. Giovanni Auditore. _Papa_.”

“Papa.” The boy, Nikolai, whispers to himself as if tasting the word. There are some others mixed in afterward, but Giovanni can't place the language. Petruccio is shivering where he stands tucked into Giovanni's side.

“Let us go, my son.” Giovanni says, and stands up taking Petruccio with him. The boy is too old for such, but he has always been a slight boy with a light constitution. His son wraps his arms around Giovanni's shoulders and buries his face in Giovanni's neck. “Perhaps we can find Federico, hmm? Puzzle this out together.”

With his son secure on his back the Assassin turns his attention back to the other child. He is small; maybe half Petruccio's age. What could children have done to be cast to this... place? Nikolai bites his lip, and though he tentatively slips his hand into Giovanni's when offered his gaze never leaves Petruccio.

* * *

It is not long before Giovanni spots a concentration of light. They walk toward it, moving slowly down a set of stairs that seem to have been carved for a creature with a leg and stride that surpasses human. He has to stop and lift the children down for every step for he won't risk letting them jump – a twisted ankle or broken bone is the last thing they need. He hasn't spotted anything but empty rooms and carved walls for what seems like an eternity, and the light is at least something to go toward.

They are still three steps from the base of the stairs before Giovanni can make out what the shining thing is, and his first instinct is to cover Petruccio's eyes. The other boy gasps and ducks behind both Audiotore, clutching at Giovanni's leg and muttering _fext_ , whatever it means, over and over.

It is a pile of human shaped meat. From his work as an Assassin Giovanni knows human anatomy well enough to know what will kill a man. The location of major organs, how much blood can be lost before the imbalance of humors is fatal, and such like. He is not a doctor, however, and never dissected a corpse. He has never flayed skin from flesh, or flesh from bone: that is the work of a Torturer, not an Assassin.

But, in the light cast by a grid of golden lines covering the carcass, and unable to tear his gaze away Giovanni looks closer. Everytime the light pulses, flares like the beat of a heart, there is more flesh present. Veins branching like roots on a meaty dirt are being covered. It is not a man being torn apart. He is being built _up_. White light, pale like morning sunlight, is flowing from the carvings on the stone to concentrate on the creation.

It is beautiful and horrible at once, and as Giovanni helps the children down the last of the steps he wonders if that sack of slowly mending meat had once been him. After he died, was he then remade? Such a process explains their current state, but for what purpose? Why Petruccio? Nikolai?

The pulses come faster, speeding to completion, and the curled figure on the floor resolves into a woman. Her skin, once it finishes forming, is pale as milk and her hair spills around her like ink. She is huddled, curled in on herself, and when Giovanni walks around to her he can see the small bump of an unborn child, and the angry raised skin of scarring just above her heart.

He wonders who it was who killed an expecting mother. Certainly no Assassin, even if the fresh yet old wound resembles one that his brothers would have struck. She looks like she's having a nightmare.

He has a sudden pang for Maria, his beloved wife. She had not been in the crowd, she and Claudia should have been safe, but how would she have taken his death? Her children's deaths? Almighty Lord Above... she had always been more devout than he, it seemed blasphemy to marry such a woman, but she knew his work and understood. She yet had two living children who would need her strength.

The golden light fades, and the woman jerks with a scream of, “Ikaros!”

She sits up and looks around, narrowing her gaze at Giovanni as she stands. Her arms drift protectively toward her belly as she frowns, and there is a painfully familiar glint in her eyes as she examines himself and the boys. Even in the now once again dimness of Purgatory he can recognize his grandfathers hard, assessing gaze.

The Gift.

She only softens when Petruccio sneezes and rubs at his nose. She says something, then, in a language that is vaguely familiar as if he has heard it spoken many times at a market but the understanding is lost to Giovanni.

“I am sorry, Madonna.” He answers, slowly, hoping she might speak Italian. It is not a very large hope. “But I know not a word you've said.”

The look she gives him is one of confusion, but not necessarily incomprehension. She licks her lips and tries again, this time there a few words that sound familiar, until – _dio._

Maria would have been a much better choice for this. Giovanni grimaces at the half-thought, and immediately takes it back. And to think, he'd insisted on the boys studying _French_ , something useful, instead of Latin. After all, he'd argued, it is not as though any of their children were destined for a life in the Church.

* * *

Kassandra, as Giovanni learns through the universal language of pantomime and a smattering of shared words, accompanies them for lack of anything better to do. She's not the only one. As they wander through the dark, stone passageways there are more confused, scared people though thankfully they only come across one other individual unfinished. Kassandra leans close to the grid of light and pokes at it, much to another man's dismay, but her fingers pass through harmlessly.

And then they find the corpse.

A true corpse, not simply a man not yet fully made. It is difficult to tell specifics in the low light, but from his thoroughly grayed hair he was an aged man. One of them they've picked up, one that hasn't spoken at all, crouches down beside a face rendered unrecognizable and smiles at it. Kassandra's eyebrows dip and she frowns as she kicks a limp, hairy leg.

“ _I think I knew this person. He seems, familiar.”_ She says, or that is what Giovanni thinks she means. 

He goes back to examining the body as the children stay back with a young man closer to Ezio's age. Where there was once a face is a bloody ruin, flesh and bone pulped under repeated, angry strikes. It had to be a fist: they've nothing but themselves in this Purgatory. The body, too, is damaged. Fist sized bruising along the stomach, and more defensive bruising along the arms. He had not been a fighter, whoever he was, and his killer had been beyond reason.

Or he simply wanted it to hurt.

There are droplets of blood near invisible against the dark stone, but Kassandra and, strangely, the man who might be mute spot them and make to follow. Giovanni does, too, perhaps there will be answers... but then he looks back at Petruccio and Nikolai and he hesitates.

Petruccio straightens, blinks and he walks forward determinedly not looking at the body. Only at Giovanni, with his friend's hand held in a crushing grip dragging the younger boy along. “Father? Shall we go?”

Children are little miracles. He knew this from the moment Federico was placed in his hands, yet he seems to learn it anew every day.

They follow the path of blood, walking, and so gradually the ambient lighting grows Giovanni doesn't notice until he blinks and realizes he can _see_ the carvings that riddle the floors, the walls, and that there _is_ a vaulted ceiling high above. With the increased light comes a renewed, vague sense of shame. Possible to ignore in the general darkness, but now, their nakedness is on full display for all.

And yet... there is nothing to be done.

Nothing that can be done.

It makes Giovanni's lips twitch, briefly, into a smile. For all the finery of the Bishops and Cardinals, or Lords and Ladies, did they not all come into the word in not but skin and blood and that is how they leave it? Equals, bared before God?

Then he hears it, speech, and - “Brother!”

Petruccio tries to run forward, but Kassandra catches him and places her fingers to her lips. She then ducks behind a black slab, a pillar, and drags his son with her. Giovanni goes to do the same. Federico is here, but someone beat a man to death. That is not an easy thing to do. 

A little girl's head pokes out from around the stone door frame, low enough that if someone had been planning an ambush they likely would have missed the first strike. She spots them, head on a swivel to take in everyone, and purses her lips before commenting in blessedly clear French, “ _I wouldn't try anything... mean... if I were you. Sixteen triggers easily.”_

Then, Italian as his eldest ruffles the girl's hair while moving her out of the way. It's been so long since Federico wore his hair down, he looks strange, but it is him. His face trembles and then Giovanni holds his first born in his arms. “Father! Brother! You are here!”

“Where is here? Do you know, brother?” Petruccio asks as he suffers through hugs and pats and more hair ruffling while they all shuffle through the empty doorway into a large rounded chamber. 

“Ah, actually-” Giovanni cannot remember the last time his shameless novice of a son looked flustered. Panicked, almost. Not even when faced with the noose had he been so unsettled. “I've been told we're beneath St. Peters.”

“The Vatican?” Giovanni says, breathless, as he takes in all the people that have collected in the chamber. They number twenty, minus one. In the very center, on a slightly raised platform, sits a man with bloody hands and cheek and a near euphoric expression. Across his lap, dressed in odd raiment of white and blue, is a sleeping angel.

The wings are nearly as large as the angel himself, one pressed between divine messenger and mortal and the other unfolded and almost _beckoning_ as gold and black feathers splay across the stone. The creature is unmistakable.

As are the buckles of the hidden blade strapped to the arm that rests against his torso.

* * *

Desmond floats. Laying back, he floats and tries not to think about anything. It shouldn't be hard. There is gray as far as he can see. Endless clouds of the stuff. There are no pressing engagements for the dead, and he is certain that is what he is, regardless of the status of his mind. 

Conversely, not thinking is very hard when there is nothing to think about. 

Saving everyone? That hurt. He hadn't known such a pain was possible. It wasn't, he thinks, supposed to hurt so badly but Minerva had broken the Eye and Juno rebuilt it as best she could. Corrupted it. She wanted to be a god and... Desmond makes a pillow of one arm and raises the other to the not sky. Burned black, and when he turns his arm he can see the branching veins on the underside. That is another thing that shouldn't be.

With his arm so charred, the dark blue veins should be impossible to see, but there they are in glittering gold. They disappear under the sleeve of his hoodie and if he thinks too much about it Desmond can still feel the blinding pain in his eye as The Eye forced his own flesh and blood to serve as an interface.

Because to use Minerva's Masterwork one had to have the proper Vision. 

But everything is Grey now, he can't see a thing, just this strange mist.

Is this what had happened to Clay? To Juno? 15 and all the others that came before? Uploaded their minds as their bodies failed and then... what? Get deleted? Go mad from isolation? Whatever she had been, Juno wouldn't have been part of the Triad if she had always been a power hungry mad woman. There was honest grief in her words when she spoke of the flare. 

Clay had managed to make himself an island. Juno had been able to get past Rebecca's firewalls even if it had been done with all the subtly of a brick to the head. She had probably built herself a damn palace to wait out the millennia. And here he was, trapped in a boring ass simulation while his body moldered in a cave.

They deserved better. _All_ of them. 

Desmond rolls to his feet with a grunt, and catches some mist in his hands. He doesn't actually know that much about programming, and what lessons had been taken to heart are years out of date. Though there are threads he can see if he tries doing so strains his eyes to the point of pain. Still, if there was even a smidgen of truth in Juno's ramblings he doesn't need to _know_ anything.

Isu have to know everything. It was in their nature. To quantify and break things down to their smallest bits, examine and re-examine until time was just another series of numbers to use for their own benefit. Taking anything on Faith was akin to heresy in their worldview.

Humans aren't like that. Desmond, for all his carefully selected genes, isn't like that. He likes to believe the best in people, even when they are utter assholes. 

Desmond stares at his empty hands, at the nothing that is felt but not seen, and firmly believes: _I need a drink._

There is a glass bottle cradled in his hands, and amber liquid inside sloshing.  


	2. The Family Business

** "It is a good life we lead, brother." **

** "The best.  May it never change." **

** "And may it never change us." **

When Federico had first awoke, he had not been alone. The little French girl had been the first thing he saw -her surprised eyes wide and an ethereal amber in the fading golden glow of his _r_ _é_ _surrection-_ and it was enough to snap him out of the confused, fearful state he'd been in when the world dropped from beneath and the shouted words of the Gonfaloniere slammed into his heart like a gavel.

They kept echoing in his ears, a taunting phantom, as he dazedly watched the girl scramble away at his jerking movments. As Eve after the apple, and draped in growing shadows, she belatedly attempted to cover her intimate parts. Federico looked away to preserve her own sense of modesty, for she was tiny and in the dim light of the strange underworld more boy than woman. He looked away, gaze wandering aimlessly for familiar faces as his neck throbbed and his heart ached.

Father, angry and raging as the noose tightened. Sweet Petruccio, eyes wide and tongue caught by disbelief that curdled into fear so strong Federico could taste it.

His eyes remembered seeing his younger brother, seeing the beaked hood Federico himself had never had the rank to don, and it had looked _right_ on him. Ezio's appearance had, in a strange way, comforted Federico. They were not alone. Thieves. Courtesans. Mercenaries. Assassin's did not have the privileged of working in the light, but they had allies and so long as _one_ survived they would be avenged. Their father's last words promise and curse both.

But the robes, blinding white and far too beautiful for their purpose, had stood out like a horrible beacon.

For while Ezio possessed an almost unnatural aptitude for the skills of their bloody trade, Federico had only just begun to teach his little brother the finer points of combat at their father's behest, and Federico was yet a novice himself. Against experinced men, _armored_ men, Ezio would fall no matter the strength of his will.

As Federico had fallen. As father had; knuckles bloody and spirit broken when his youngest had been dragged from bed with a knife at his throat, before Giovanni was buried under flesh as though only the weight of a small army could restrain the Master Assassin.

The memory, more vivid with every reprise, had left Federico colder than the dark, hungry stone that tried to leech the warmth from his bones.

It was only the girl, head canted at a strange angle as she squinted at him from beneath curtains of pearl-pale hair, that kept his mind from drowning in the past. So he followed her wraith like form, listening with half an ear as she chattered about _liars,_ and _doctors,_ and _rats in a maze._

To say he understood half of what she'd been saying would be generous. The individual words themselves, yes, but the context? She thought she was sleeping, that everything was a dream - _or a nightmare, but you, monsieur, are too pretty to be one of those-_ because someone had threatened her with it. A never ending sleep while they did whatever they liked, or didn't like, with her body and blood.

From that, he gathered she had died. Her parents, or at least her caretakers, had sold her due to the value of her bloodline, though it was not of any nobility she knew. Those that bought her performed experiments that were _like being in a nightmare_ and left her with terrible headaches that had only grown worse as time went on. When he asked why a doctor would do such a thing she squinted at him, at the shifting darkness past him, and shrugged. Not even his best smile could tease a reason or name from her lips as though afraid that even in a supposed dream the doctors, or perhaps demons, were listening.

They walked because it was the only thing that could give warmth, and they stayed together because being alone was a far, far worse prospect in the dimly lit underworld. Had they been going in circles? It was almost impossible to tell, and hadn't he heard a similar story once?  Of monsters and mazes and something terrible waiting in the center. The girl did not seem to care overmuch, humming as small fingers trailed under the glowing, geometric scribbles that were all they had for light. Occasionally, Federico thought he heard _something_. Whispers. Wind. Trickles of water. His eyes, strained to the point of pain in their bleak surroundings found nothing, and so it was only his father's words that he let fill his mind. The Creed.

 _You say the words, but you don't understand. You can know nothing, my son, for nothing is true. The mind can play tricks, fear and doubt will cloud your thoughts, and so you must master yourself, and believe only in that. In what you_ see _, and what you_ do _._

An eternity later they stumbled upon a man punching a corpse. The girl gasped as she backpedaled, Federico's hand dragging her by the shoulder behind an odd vertical slab the only thing keeping her from slipping on the smooth stone floor. The distant man shuddered at the sound of the living, teeth bared.

Maybe it was supposed to be a disarming smile?  There was something familiar about it, but only enough to be unsettling.  Wreathed in the ever-present shadows the blood had splashed over his pale face like dark freckles. His hands were dripping from the violence, each wet plop of blood a strange echo of the steady thuds that had been his fists, and he waved unerringly to their position as though he could see them despite the darkness and distance.

Like Ezio, when he used his gift.

And once the girl had revealed herself, walking forward after several long seconds of staring at the horrific tableau with an intensity that left Federico's skin prickling, the man chuckled in what the assassin's apprentice could only describe as satisfaction as he called out, “ _Thirteen!_ ”*

Not a name, but a number, and one that was acknowledged with a wary nod as Federico moved to put himself between the two. The bloody man knew Federico's name, as well, but it had been said with shock and breathless sort of wonder followed by the abrupt need to hide his hands behind his back with an abashment akin to Petruccio's when caught sneaking out of the house.  The whole change in bearing was enough to pull the Auditore up short.

But that, that was something to think on later.

“Federico.” Now, his father breathed, _his father breathed,_ as the Auditore elder shuddered and tore his gaze from the madman and his feathered prize. “A word.”

“Y-yes. Of course.” But there wasn't anywhere to go in the lit room, unless they wanted to return to the expanse of cold, dark chambers beyond. His father pressed his lips together and crouched in front of Petruccio and the other boy. He bid the children to stay together and get to know their new friend, perhaps tease her name from her, whilst he and Federico discussed things.

They stepped to the side, keeping their voices low, and under the comforting weight of his father's gaze Federico reported what he'd seen. What he'd heard. And his thoughts, as tangled as they were, unspooled as though the two of them were not in some strange, underground place of the dead but back at the Palazzo Auditore in his father's office.

“Then what happened to you was not so different from us.” His father murmured, casting his gaze around the massive chamber and those within. Some of the people had clustered, humans seeking comfort in the presence of others, some remained distant. Most of those had haunted, shadowed eyes. Federico couldn't remember what happened between his hanging and his waking.

Maybe those unfortunate souls did.

Giovanni's gaze, as Federico's own, inevitably drifted back to the two at the center of the room. As if sensing the direction of his son's attention Giovanni whispered, “You say he has recognized all of us?”

“Yes. He knew me, and I've never seen the man in my life. If he wasn't so distracted with... with the angel I would guess he knows you, too, father.”

The pregnant woman broke from her cluster, seemingly frustrated with her lack of shared language, and _marched_ toward the dais. Her head was high, her back straight, and despite her belly Federico was suddenly struck by the thought that she could and would tear through everyone in the room like a sword through silk. She stopped with one foot on the black steps, perfect for pushing off and jumping the rest of the way, but instead of attacking she spoke.

It sounded vaguely familiar, but Federico couldn't place the tongue.

From the sudden confusion clouding Sixteen's formerly content expression, he did not know it either. At first. The blond man frowned and pulled the angel closer, a bloody dragon with its hoard, and questioned her in a language that was neither her own, French, or Italian. A single word, and it hit her like a slap, the confident bearing vanishing as she swayed and raised a hand to her head as if to fend off the blow.

It only lasted a moment before the woman grit her teeth and called out more strange words, gesturing as she did.

“Oh.” The man then said, confusion clearing to something Federico couldn't place. “You _want_ to bleed. Was it so bad, Fifteen?”

Beside him, his father loudly cleared his throat. “I believe,” Giovanni said, pitching his voice to round the room, to control it. “The Lady Kassandra wishes to know what the small god, that is, the angel plans to do with all of us? And how we are to leave this place?”

“Plans?” Sixteen echoed, noticing Giovanni for the first time and snapping his head between the unconscious angel in his lap, and the many people watching them all.  Federico saw a young woman, perhaps only a year or two older than Claudia, sitting against a wall and rocking. Her hair was short, boyish, and her eyes were firmly shut as she fervently whispered. The was a man praying, too, with skin so sun touched it was almost red.  The madman's shoulders shook as he wound in on himself, neck bowing to rub his cheek against the angel's. Strange, hysterical giggles broke apart his words. “Ha. This lovable, _glorious_ idiot doesn't _plan_ anything. He just sort of, stumbles from point to point, and _somehow_ it all works out. Goddamnit. God _damn_ it. Just had to prove me wrong, didn't you, you wondrous bastard.“

The man was crying. The tears fell down his face mingling briefly with the dried blood, blooming black back to red, before scattering on the white doublet of the sleeping celestial.

Giovanni's voice turned soft, but no less demanding. “That may be so, but we cannot stay here forever. I have been told we are beneath St. Peter's Basilica. If so, there must be an exit, and surely the angel-”

“No!” Sixteen shouted, squeezing his prize so hard the great wings flapped in protest, nearly knocking the man off the platform. Someone screamed. Whispered apologies filled the space of the room, each one babbled by the same voice in a different language as he gathered the angel back to him. Sixteen pet the short, dark curls on the angel's head and shuddered. “Sorry. No, I don't want to wake him. He deserves this, fuck, I don't even know how much effort... he gave me my body back. Hell, he brought _you_ guys back, and you've been dead for centuries.”

What?

“But that's Seventeen for you.” Sixteen continued with a shake of his head, oblivious to Federico's sudden, internal panic. _Centuries?_   “Doing the impossible. Um, yeah. There's an exit, I don't know if it will work for us, though, we don't have an Apple or an Ezio.”

“Ezio? What does Ezio have to do with this?” The words leapt from Federico's mouth as his mind latched onto his younger brother's name. He escaped, surely, he _had_ to have _lived_. To keep mother and sister safe.

“What doesn't he?” Sixteen sighed, shifting his weight in a rocking motion before surging to his feet. The gold tipped feathers skimmed the ground as the bloody man carefully dismounted the dais. Small sparks flashed where divine dragged against stone. “This is where he got the prophecy for _this one_. Of course, that was after Ezio punched out the Pope...”

“Who fought father? Why?” One of the men asked in a halting mix of Spanish and Italian. More voices were adding to the din, and Federico clenched his fists. The pain in his palm cut through the tightness around his throat; the once familiar, friendly faces filled with poison baying for the death of his family.

_Nothing is True._

A sharp, high pitched whistle cut through the bickering with painful clarity. The expecting mother, Kassandra or Fifteen, crossed her arms under her breasts and nodded at his father.

“As much as I would like to learn of the fate of the rest of my family,” His father's expression was tight, his eyes briefly closed before he exhaled and continued with determination. “Right now, in this moment, we need clothing. I doubt the papal guards would take kindly to naked men and women cavorting about their inner sanctums. Particularly dead men and women.  The Church is rather proprietary when it comes to miracles.”

“I'm not giving Desmond up.” Sixteen growled, and once again Federico was reminded of a beast.

“Peace. No one is suggesting that, but surely-” His father stopped as the world shook. Federico heard Petruccio cry out and he stumbled toward his little brother, arms reaching. Was this how it ended? If they had been dead for centuries...

Revelations. He'd never cared to the read the Bible, but every morbid child who could wondered how it was supposed to end. Had there been something about the dead rising in the last days?

Why was Sixteen laughing?

With his arms around all three children, Federico looked over his shoulder. On the far side of the room, past dark slabs that had lost the inner light of their strange script, something that was glowing like hot iron rose from the earth. The angel strained in Sixteen's grip, back arching as the lines of gold in his feathers answered the staff in brilliance.

Federico watched as light flew as an arrow from the tip of the staff, hit the wall and sliced solid stone as a wire did cheese. Door thus carved, or perhaps simply revealed, the staff's glow dimmed to nothing and the angel fell limp. “Father?!”

“Here, son. I am fine.” Giovanni's lips twisted into a wry smile, though there was a wrinkle of tension between his eyes.  Like there had been the morning before they were betrayed. “It seems our prayers were answered. And with the pope's own staff.”

“ _He's not angry, is he?_ ” The little girl asked, hugging herself.

“Non.” Federico tried to reassure her, before eyeing the door. “What do we do, now?”

“Same as always, my son. Same as always.”

The lady Kassandra continued to ignore all sense of caution and moved over to the staff, claiming it with all the casual simplicity as one who would pluck a flower. She held it not as a delicate thing, however, nor as a symbol of authority. The woman swiped it through the air like a weapon, twirling it around in her hands until she could thrust with the deceptively sharp, pointed end of it. Satisfied, she propped it against her shoulder before calling out, “Ella!”

* * *

Something had changed.

A smell, maybe, or a sound? Everything was Grey, the endless mists of Grey, always Grey. That hadn't changed. And it was... laborious.... to think after so long with nothing but... Grey. It lulled one into the doldrums of the mind and ate away at the soul.

Such had been pleasant, once. Peaceful. Tempting. There was simplicity in... Grey. He could trick himself, once, that it was a fog billowing off the sea so thick a man could nary see the hand in front of his face. That had been a comfort. For a time. But the fog never lifted, there was no port or starboard or hard London cobblestones beneath his feet.

And maybe that was the _point._ He wouldn't know. He'd said the words and sat in the pews when called upon, respected those that did, but he'd never been much of a God fearing man. Most he'd known had been the same. The ocean with its shifting moods and powerful gales was more deity to him than an unseen, unfeeling god. He'd sinned like he breathed, or near enough.

The Grey was, he once mused, a more gentle punishment than the preachers would have him believe but so much crueler all the same.

It made one want to forget. Forgetting would be better, easier, but there was an angry stinging in his chest he clung to as a babe would a mother's tit. The sting that he could not remember the reason for was his compass, and by it and a half remembered conversation he could set his course.

Nothing is True. Everything is Permitted. That is the world's only certainty.

Had it been a man who said those words? A woman? He could not recall. And he could not muster the energy to care. But the words were important. He could not, _must not_ , forget them. Though more likely than not a trick of the mind, a peculiar madness inherit to the Grey, he didn't feel quiet so alone when he thought about those words. That voice.

It had been something to anchor him in all the nothing.

Yet, _something_ had changed.

And he thought of the words, again, for the first time in what seemed to be a very long time. His mind lurched, unused to action, as thought built up around idea. There was nothing in the Grey, and this was True. But, where was Everything? What was Everything?

A smell, then. A scent. Smoke and salt on the breeze? No. That was... a life ago. Familiar, but something else.

He moved, took a step, and _knew_ he progressed despite the unchanging mists. It there was a feeling, like gold, like wind, like _moonlight on the sea_ , an indescribable certainty that pushed him toward the _something_. There was no way to determine how long he walked, no way to measure progress but by the approaching crescendo in his bones.

Until the something resolved into a door.

Not the prettiest door, not by any objective measure, but a most wondrous sight still. He drank in the shimmering oak that burned away mist like the rising sun. He blinked, shook his head, and the blinding white-gold faded back into a quickly recalled memory.

The words _Eagle's Rest_ had been burned into the wood, with a curious shape drawn underneath. That, too, was familiar and the thoughts were coming quicker for it. His hand went to the burning compass at his heart, and came away with flakes of red. He looked down, and in the pure light cast by the door he caught the glinting metal of buckle on his waist belt.

Had it always been there?

Wiping the fading rust on his coat, he shouldered the door open not sure what to expect, but it couldn't be worse and so had to be better. So long as it wasn't more of the _same_...

“Er... Hello?” Said a man, looking up from a collection of colorful thin... things... with a confused expression that probably matched the one on his own face. There was an open bottle on the bar in front of him, and an impossible pair of living shadows at his back. The shape of them, though vague, was plenty familiar as the forms rippled over wood, metal, and glass in time to the stranger's movements. “Who are you?”

The man asked the question while a strange, equally dark hand crept toward his bottle of... bourbon?

“Edward Kenway.” The answer came out before he realized that yes, that was who he was, he remembered. Too stubborn to give in and fade, at least, not fully. He felt his face twist, _smile_ , years dialing back with a brush of will as a kicked habit came roaring to the fore to check for the entitled little shites that seemed to lurk at every tavern he cared to patron. He cocked his head, taking in the eyes blinking at him with open curiosity. Strange eyes. One a hazel so pure it was almost gold, almost seemed to _glow,_ the other rich and dark like cocoa beans. “...Roberts?”

The bartender shook his head, and Edward grunted to himself. Of course, that wasn't right. The eyes weren't quite right, or the face.

“Um. Name's Desmond. Desmond Miles... you said Kenway. Any relation to Haytham Kenway?”

Haytham. Edward pulled on an odd padded stool and spun it around, and he couldn't _stop_ the grin that blossomed on his face. He remembered, and wondered at the impossibility that he _could_ have forgotten. Jenny and Haytham were his _reason_. “Aye. I've a son, Haytham, ornery little shite, but he's mine.”

“Huh.” The being grunted, head tilting like a bird as he stared at Edward as if he had never seen a man before. Maybe he hadn't. Edward's gaze flicked to the rows upon rows of glass that glinted teasingly through the shifting shadows spreading protectively over them.

“Got any rum?”

“Uh, yeah.” The creature's eyes moved off him, so damn similar to Roberts but oddly sane and soothing, to turn to the wall of bottles behind him with an amused, twisting smile. “What kind you want?”

“Strong. Straight.”

“That... doesn't tell me much. What _kind?_ ”

Edward peered at the wall of bottles, realization clicking. It wasn't a wall of bottles. It was _treasure_. The best kind. And this creature was its guardian. He shouldn't let Jenny or Haytham see him drinking so, but his children were... elsewhere. Perhaps a better place. He _prayed_ they were in a better place. Somewhere not so Grey. And not so Alone.

“...all of them. I want to try them all. Rum. Wine. _Everything._ ”

The angel grinned, laughing, and with the flourish of a magician or perhaps a pick-pocket produced a crystal clear shot glass. He dropped it on the counter atop a bit of soft white paper, then tossed a bottle artfully between his hands before performing a small miracle in holding it high over his head letting the liquid fall the distance into the small glass without spilling a drop. He capped the bottle and slouched forward, chin on hand as Edward tossed back the drink. It was good, but not nearly strong enough. It had the scent of rum, the taste, but not the _kick._ This was the white stuff?

“Why don't you tell me about your son?”

Already Desmond was pouring another glass but something darker. Good man. Angel. Being. Gold glinted in the strange torches along the wall. Edward savored the next drink, watched as his companion took a pull directly from his own bottle, and as the words spilled from his mouth it was as if this _Desmond_ was _giving_ him his memories back instead of Edward telling him a history of love and piracy and high seas.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Federico might be a bit traumatized. Also, I am annoyed that I go on vacation and when I come back my notebook with all the info I copied for the Subjects has gone missing. Alas.
> 
> Also, though not specified because Edward does not know what a crazy straw is, that is what buzzed!Desmond was willing into existence. A papal staff shaped crazy straw. Sadly, he keeps forgetting to make sure they are hollow enough for liquid to go through.
> 
> *For those who are re-reading the chapter, I managed to locate my notes and realized I made an oppsie. The girl is actually Subject 13, not 12. Ubisoft actually gave us a bit of information about 12 and he is a he who was used to try and follow a scientist ancestor. For my purposes he is also a former Abstergo Employee who happily volunteered for the bonus that came with working in the Animus Project but was then not allowed to leave once he realized just how dangerous being a 'subject' was, and what they were trying to do, namely time travel to change the past. He thinks the current situation is fucking hilarious, considering.


	3. Spiral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, no Desmond. He's too busy getting pleasantly buzzed while being regaled with the Life and Times of Edward Kenway.
> 
> I hope I got Clay's crazy right. Since he can understand almost all languages being spoken I didn't bother with Italics or identifying every one.

“ **We're all books containing thousands of pages and within each of them lies an irreparable truth.”**

Rome never changed much. As a tiny country within a country, the seat of the _Holy Father_ and the center of Catholic religion that was run by ceremony as much as bureaucracy, the nation-state was as much an antique as modern. Clay hadn't thought much about it when he woke up, naked and flat on his back, with the obsidian alloy the Isu preferred leaching his body heat much as it leached background radiation from the universe. He'd been too busy marveling that he could feel cold, and not the numb absence of sensation that he'd had as a conglomeration of memories and habit that called itself Subject Sixteen, but a true _feeling_ of _cold_. Of pressure, where his body weight - _weight, mass, substance_ \- pressed skin to stone.

He would have lingered longer, just marveling at it all, but for the _knowledge_ of himself as strings of data, an illusion of body when Clay _should have been_ meat tossed into the Tiber in mocking mimicry of so many Assassin victims of the past, wrapping _around_ and _into_ another bundle of bright, shining, _naïve_ data. For a moment horror and adrenaline flashed through his - _his?!_ \- body and he'd sat up in terror holding his arms to his face. It was dim in the Isu temple, and his pupils had no doubt blown into a pair of black holes, but when he ran his pale hands over bare, pale arms only to catch on raised scarring he'd sighed in relief.

He wasn't Seventeen - _precious poor Desmond doomed to die, fates shared across time-_ he was Subject Sixteen. He remembered carving into his own skin, happily, dragging himself to the Animus with the last of the strength as the office wavered before his eyes and Shao-Jun skipped ahead... 

Clay Kaczmarek; gloriously, impossibly, _alive_.

Somehow _-his purpose to die and serve as warning, as a message, Juno said so-_ Somewhy - _Seventeen said no. Seventeen is a sentimental sap. SeventeenSixteenFifteenFourteenTHIRTEENTWEVELE ALL MENT TO DIE-_ Somewhen. - _Time the language of which existence is made of._

When the group of living dead, and Clay had to bury his face in Desmond's neck to muffle the snickers, followed Fifteen out of Minerva's Vault and through narrow, winding staircase up and out into St. Peter's Basilica _proper_ he'd thought he knew what to expect. Desmond had brought them back _-died so that you, our children, might live-_ but if the mistake that was Subject Two, and the presence of the Auditores was any indication the method Seventeen used wasn't very precise, or they were simply a victim of User Error.

It wasn't like the Eye had come with an instruction manual. Juno probably didn't think it needed one - _a spark, a truth within a lie-_ as she had been right there in the Grand Temple and the Gray both.

Clay thought he knew, was smugly expecting surprise and shock and electric lights while he thanked the closest thing to divinity he knew that the Templars had largely separated from religion to focus on fiscal levers of world domination. However; upon emerging from the hidden vault with his angel held in his rapidly tiring arms and witnessing men in red and black armor of a bygone era being dragged into a side chamber Clay stumbled. Turning to catch his shoulder on a wall, one of Seventeen's wings slipped free from Clay's grasp, flopping to the floor.

“Um, are you alright?” Clay blinked at the worried face of Subject Ten. He had read the man's records as stored in the Animus datacore for lack of anything better to do when your mind goes as fast as a computer can compute. A former Assassin. A _retired_ Assassin. Not by choice, but by practicality, and looking at the man now it was as if the botched leap that had paralyzed his legs and made him such an easy target for Abstergo's retrieval team had never happened. “If you need a break, I can take him-”

“I'm fine,” Clay ground out, even as he was forced to lean into the wall for support. The Chosen One might be unto a god, but he wasn't light. And the wings, as magnificent as anything, were damned awkward to wrap his arms around. But that didn't mean he'd give his idiot up.

Ten raised his hands in surrender, the ring finger of his left hand twitching as if to curl before the man seemed to think better of it. He stepped back to give Sixteen space, they _all_ gave Sixteen space, and the young woman whose _name_ escaped him hugged her stomach. Subject Six asked half to herself in wavering, frightened Portuguese, “That couldn't have been the Papal Guard, could it?”

Clay shook his head and hefted Desmond, stumbling into the chamber where his - _where Ezio's_ \- father and Subject Fifteen were stripping broken necked men of their clothing. More Giovanni than Fifteen. The woman had gotten the armor off just fine but the layers of lacing and ties were giving her trouble.

Clay wouldn't have been all that surprised if she gave it up as a bad job and just continued to run about naked. Her bare breasts and the bump on her belly might just be enough to distract from the Staff of Eden she'd brained one of the poor bastards with.

Giving into the inevitable, Clay found a corner in the now rather cramped room and rested Desmond on the ground. He watched the subtle movements of breath on the body, the relaxed nature of it, and listened with half an ear as Giovanni dressed in stolen clothes and made plans. As worried people, combatants and civilians alike - _but who could be said to be a civilian after walking in the footsteps of their ancestors_ \- murmured among themselves in a dozen languages. He didn't want to think of what the Church, of what the Borgia, would do if they found Seventeen as he was. He did anyway. The circling thoughts made Clay's bruised and bloody knuckles throb.

His fingers flitted over his too distant cousin's sleeping face. _Blood of Eagles._ He'd half thought it had been the animus and the bleeding effect, but Desmond really and truly did resemble their shared ancestor. Not a perfect likeness, but the scar just served to highlight all the things that _were_ the same. Dress them in robes and hood, and even Ezio's own sister might mistake one Assassin for the other.

“I want to go!” Subject Thirteen called in her native tongue, voice a determined hiss. “I can help!”

“You are a child.” Giovanni pointed out, not unkindly, as Federico helped secure a spaulder in place. “And a brave one, but a child nonetheless. Far better-”

“I can See! Just like my Ancestor! I won't get in the way, I will hide in the small places no one looks and with great-great-grandfather's Sight you can search that much faster!” Subject Thirteen argued, the words pouring out of her in a desperate rush. Her eyes darted between father and son, and between them she was so, so very small. Delicate, almost. Desperate.

Giovanni's lips pressed into a thin line as he raised a hand, covering his face. He muttered something that sounded like he was either invoking his wife or the Madonna herself, before kneeling down to Thireen's eye level.

Clay smirked. The younger the subject that went into the animus, the better and worse the bleeds. Young minds were elastic, malleable, easy to go in and take peaks around but also too easy. Tiny bitch knew exactly what she was doing. Of course, Thirteen's ancestor had been a man with a taste for shiny things that did not belong to him, and there was nothing shiner than a Piece of Eden.

And Daniel Cross - _he who walked into the Assassin's Den_ \- had completely obliterated Nikolai Sokolov. Except, apparently, not.

Did that mean that Cross was still running around in Twenty-Twelve? If Four was in the past, could his body even be a traitor in the future? Or would Two just grab some other kid for the experiment, maybe give the Surrogate Initiative a shot in the arm?

“Your grandfather's Sight, you say?” The Auditore Patriarch sighed, the lines of his face expressing resignation as Sixteen turned his head to watch along with most of the group.

Thirteen's head bobbed. “I can find things that are hidden. People, things, places. Grandfather taught me.”

Well, she wasn't wrong. Technically.

“Father.” Federico cautioned, alarm obvious in his face before he bit his lip, unwilling to argue with his dad. The _Master Assassin_ that got them all killed. Clay tried to ignore how his throat ached at the phantom screams of a crowd that was twenty years gone. He carefully focused on Desmond's face, on the feel of Desmond's feathers beneath his fingers. He was Clay Kaczmarek. _Kaczmarek._

The undershirt of one of the dead guards promptly landed on the little blonde's head and she grinned, sharp and triumphant as she tugged the linen and rolled up the sleeves.

In the end, with Clay acting as the universal translator and his knuckles popping the whole time, Giovanni, Fifteen, Thirteen, and Ten vanish out the door in various states of dress leaving the rest of them to their confusion and nakedness. Ten doesn't know anything about moving in armor, so the only ones who looks like a proper guard is Giovanni. Fifteen's belly doesn't really work with plate, especially when the guard she killed is so much shorter than her, and the look she gives the discarded hose is one Sixteen knows well.

The door to the chamber doesn't lock, but luckily it only has the one entrance so Federico and another man carry the dead guards over to act as barricades. The trio of corpses aren't much, but they're better than the decorative, delicate end tables that line the walls. What even is this room for? No wonder the animus never bothered rendering anything but the doors.

Ezio's older brother - _does it still count if Ezio has lived longer_ \- then takes up a guarding position near the door the intercept anyone who enters while also keeping an eye on the rest of the room. He's got a sword as naked as he is, as they are, but there isn't a lick of embarrassment in his body as he surveys his charges. Federico's gaze drifts, occasionally focusing back to the door, to the bodies blocking it, before turning back to the group of fellow resurrectees. There is a flicker pain in his chest, an ache in Clay's head, and the Assassin goes back to where Desmond still sleeps and the pool of _calm_ that just oozes out of him.

Clay squeezes his eyes shut as at the blue pulse of Petruccio's hesitant footsteps. Subject Sixteen had been a disappointment, Two's words ringing in his ears, a descendant of bastard born from a whoreson in Venice, the time spent in Ezio's memories _wasted_. His Ezio had been old enough to be an Assassin, old enough to kill, but too young to tell the Templars where he left his Apple and too young for the pain of loss to be numbed by time and vengeance.

“Signore?” Petruccio's voice hadn't broken yet. In half a year, a year? Clay had wondered if he would have developed the rumbling purr that Ezio did, or fall more in line with Federico and Giovanni. “Is the angel well? Do you know his name? Would it be rude, do you think, might I touch-?”

Oh, God. He can't. He just can't. Clay abruptly turns and walks away, pressing hands coated in dried gore to his head and squeezing. The world drifts around him, reality unmoored as he left his feathered anchor behind. His partitions - _software incompatible with hardware_ \- where the hell are his partitions? Peopleplacesplotshistory _stories_ blend like watercolor before his eyes, the world is painted in hues of red-blue-gold, and the sound of his pulse in his ears is loud as he presses. Fuck. Merde. Cazzo.

“Shit, man. Are you bleeding?” Subject Twelve asks, and in his place like a ghostly overlay is the very image of one of the dead men all the _sane_ people are trying not to look at.

“I don't know, Philly.” Clay smiles, and he stops trying to squeeze his own head like a grape. He knows this man, but he doesn't know how he died. Templars don't like to spread around that they fed their own people into the mental grinder. His wrists _itch_. “Are you?”

* * *

 

She was kneeling for nightly prayers when she heard it. With hands clasped, eyes closed, and lips struggling on through the emotions that had threatened to drown her for years she heard it. Faint, like a shout diluted by wind. Clear, as a lover's whisper curling against her ear. Somewhere a bell cried out and Maria gasped, folded hands pressing hard against her breast as her heart thundered in answer. Tears gathered at the corner of her eyes.

She had not heard such a beautiful sound in years, had not dared consider she would hear again, and yet there it was. Fading now; but leaving behind an echo she could trace it if she tried.

_Giovanni._

She was Maria Auditore n ée de'Mozzi , wife and mother to Assassins, and by God' grace she would do more than try. Bracing her hands on her bed, Maria pushed herself up, casting her gaze about the room as she did so. Searching for any trace of that beautiful, glimmering sound. Yet, there were only the soft, shadowed forms of furniture wavering in the haze between candles. But it was always such with the curtains drawn, and so Maria opened her heart and looked  _again_ . She had prayed for years that her husband and sons might have found solace and peace in the heavens and that she might find them there someday. Now though, with a feeling that sunk past her bones and into her soul, she knew she would not.

_Oh, my Love._

Her body ached. Her eyes watered. She could almost see it, the sound that was as much _seen_ and _felt_ as heard, out of the corner of her eye...

_Oh, Lord, my God, lend me strength._

“Madonna Maria?” A woman called, nervous. Maria turned to her attendant and smiled softly at the sight of the young woman surrounded by a halo of shining, shimmering, beautiful blue. Like her own namesake, a sign, surely. “Is something the matter? Would you like tea before bed?”

Maria shook head as she stepped past the servant, absently patting her on the shoulder as she did so. Her eyes graced the hallways of the her husband's childhood home but she could not find him. There were ghosts of course, teasing whispers that she once thought a punishment, but these were old and faded with age. Skeletons of stories told around the hearth to amuse children.

Stories she should have told her children, perhaps.

“Madonna! Please, wait!”

Maria did not wait. There were too many damn walls in the way. With a grunt of effort, and a thought of dismay at how soft and stagnant she'd let herself become, Maria forced the shutters of a window open. The stars were bright. All of Monteriggioni lay sprawled out before her, candles flicking in distant windows like will-o-wisps. But for all the work her Ezio had been put into the town it still lacked the one thing that would make it a home. Her home.

_Giovanni, where are you?_

Maria hiked up her nightdress and mounted the window ledge. If she could just get a bit  _higher_ , see a bit  _further_ ...

“Mother!” Her daughter's arms, normally a welcome embrace, wrapped around her middle to pull her back inside. Maria struggled, hands reaching for the window in dismay. “Nadia, go get the doctor! Hurry!”

She did not need a doctor. Though her children meant well, she'd had her fill of doctors and their potions years ago. It was only ever her heart that was sick, not her body, and only God could see fit to fix that.

“Mother, please. Let us go back to your room and-” Claudia started, but cut off with a yelp as Maria raised her leg and with a quick strike ground her heel into her daughter's foot. The slippers her daughter wore offered little to no protection, and for a moment Maria felt a sharp prick in her chest at Claudia's pain. But she had paddled a young Federico's ass red more than once, and so when the shock of it loosened her daughter's grip Maria twisted free and dove for the still open window.

Fingers tugged lightly at her skirts, but Maria was already hugging the wall and Claudia wouldn't risk dislodging her mother. Her heart thundered in her chest as she breathed, searching for ghostly cracks in the mortar. Giovanni had always made it seem so easy. The Auditore matriarch began to climb, stomach flipping. The world faded into shades of grey as her attention narrowed to the wall before her nose. Maria was long past the days of chasing her children about the palazzo. Of climbing shelves and trees as she followed the tiny golden trails of their feet to all the secret hiding places.

The night was warm. Sweat gathered at her hairline and trickled down her neck. Maria's arms began to burn with fatigue, her fingers moreso, and absently Maria remembered that her husband wore gloves when he did such things. Her heart ached, and it was a pain that drowned out the others. She stretched for the next handhold, toes grinding against too distant pain for what little purchase was available.

_Giovanni._

Ezio wore gloves, though he no longer wore his father's armor. Which was probably for the best. Her husband would need it back, after all.

Maria's hand met air, and with a shudder of relief she hauled herself onto the still sun warmed tiles. She crawled forward on her belly and lay for a moment to recover her breath. A breeze stirred her skirts and cooled her forehead. Rolling onto her back she stared up at the sky and the blanket of stars. They really were bright.

Like diamonds against dark velvet.

She remembered Giovanni taking her to the rooftops of Florence at night, of clutching him as he carried her over forgotten scaffolding and cracked roofing, and surely that had been a ploy, an excuse to press their bodies together without anyone to object. She certainly hadn't objected. And maybe she'd expressed more fear at the height and rickety footing than she actually felt.

Smiling, Maria Auditore shakily stood and walked along the roof. Now, as then, there was a bit of forgotten scaffolding poking out from beneath the tiling. Probably integrated into the structure as improvised armature to the roofing. It was a favorite perch of pigeons if the amount of shit piled around was any indication. Maria stepped carefully, testing the strength of the whitewashed wood as she went, and crouched for stability as the wind picked up.

_My God. My Love. My Sons._

Below, a canvas of the world stretched taught. She felt _something_ stir within, filling her up like an empty cup, and it flowed out of her just as quickly. She saw, and she wept. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and was only vaguely aware of the bright ball of warm, golden light that was her Ezio coming to her with all the speed that she herself lacked. Maria stared off toward distant Rome and the faint blush of importance that sang in her mind. It was so similar to when a hungry Assassin's apprentice had slipped through her door to buy some bread, the morning sun lighting him from behind like some god of old, and she'd decided right there that he would be the man she married. He just hadn't known it yet.

“Mother,” Ezio's voice rumbled with worry, his steps silent on the roof where hers had been lost in the rustle of fabric. “Please. Claudia is worried. Come here.”

Ah. Hadn't her son been in a Rome recently? She remembered hearing of his return, that he'd failed his mission to kill the Spaniard. She glanced over her shoulder at him. Perhaps, perhaps that was why. For an Assassin to show _mercy_ to such a long standing enemy... not that it mattered to her. Ezio tried to offer her one of the charming smiles that had caused them no end of trouble in his youth, but his eyes were so sad as he held out his hand. It made her head hurt. It made her _heart_ hurt.

She opened her mouth to speak, but what could she say? How to explain the sudden certainty soothing her long abused spirit?

She had no proof, but that which was her faith in God's Gift. Her gift had never been as strong as Ezio's. And if he could not see it...

Maria glanced down and plucked a small feather from where it had gotten caught in her nightdress. Carefully, she placed it in Ezio's outstretched palm and closed his fingers over it. Her son gripped her wrist as she began to withdraw, and he made a wounded sound as he turned her hand over and examined skin that had been scrapped raw from her climb.

Maria swallowed.

“Lazarus,” She choked out, voice sounding as her hands looked. She smiled down at her boy, now a realized man, and regretted she couldn't explain and still sound sane. “Come forth."


	4. Casual Causality

“ **Sometimes things happen in a way that you don't plan or expect. History has a way of remembering things strangely.”**

The temple is lit by lamps rather than torches. They are heavily wrought of black metal with candles hidden behind cages, some suspended from the ceiling while others stand in corners on poles lacking the decor of the walls themselves. Compared to the hidden chambers she'd initially found herself in, the labyrinthine halls of marble and lesser stone is practically blinding as she slips between sculptures and shadows and sparse patrols of overly-armored guardsmen.

The staff is oddly light in her hand, almost how she imagines her father's would be, though it shares only the barest of similarities to the _caduceus_ that Pythagoras carries. Carried? There are no snakes entwined about it, for one, and instead of unfurled wings three sets of blunted prongs jut out as if waiting for a missing piece. It is also, to Kassandra's mind, ugly. Unwieldy. Or at least it _should_ be. It was obviously crafted as a weapon of ceremony rather than conquest, yet leans toward utility more than beauty.

It has a proper spartan spear point on the opposite end though without a matching counterweight the whole thing should be too top-heavy to use in battle, especially in the temple corridors they are ransacking with all the speed and stealth of rabid mice, but as soon as her hands had wrapped around the artifact golden metal had warmed and pulsed as though alive. Almost like it recognized her. Like it welcomed her. Like the spear of her grandfather, this staff was something that sang to her blood and even if it _was_ ugly and _was_ strange she had a mind to keep it. Her mother had given her Leonidas' spear, and between her death and rebirth she may not know what happened to it but the unknown god's staff would have to serve.

The Child of Nike didn't seem like he would be asking for it back, after all, and his mad priest hadn't seemed to care one way or the other. Not that she ever gave too much mind to priests or pythias.

Kassandra paused as she saw their little thief go still, the girl's eyes flashing amber as she stared through marble to something beyond. A sharp pain flashed through Kassandra's chest, and she pressed her back to a wall and felt the cold of the stone seep through the poor protection of the long, dark robe she'd claimed from a surprised priest. On the smaller man it had pooled around his bare feet in an incongruent display of both poverty and wealth; after a bit of borrowed knife work the newly cut, ragged edge fell just below her knees with the beaded necklace going to hold her hair out of her face.

He had only been the first of several such men they'd come across, through at _Giovanni's_ urging they'd avoided confrontations with the godly men. The imposed impotency grated, though she knew the decision made sense. The temple was easily the largest and most confusing she'd ever been in. Without Ikaros to act as her eyes and ears it would be near impossible to make a quick exit. What had happened to him? She did not know. There was only a gaping void where his presence should have been, as though a lamp had gone out in the back of her mind and every time she reached to ignite it her hands swept through naught but empty air.

Was it only yesterday she'd been sitting beneath a tree, safely hidden behind scrub, while Ikaros soared above a bandit camp and together they marked opponents and the shoddy cage that held the woman she'd been contracted to rescue?

The brunette mercenary rubbed at her chest, rough fabric grinding against the raised scar tissue beneath, and she wondered if it was the bandits that had killed her. One of them had been rather large, larger than even the Cyclops at his fattest, and armed with a heavy blade. If she'd gotten surrounded, if she hadn't been able to parry the blow, it could have pierced her chest guard easily enough. But wouldn't that be something one would remember?

Kassandra inched toward the end of the corridor as her hand drifted down to the bulge on stomach. Strange. It was all very, very strange.

She did not remember being -

_A white chamber, too white, and an older man. A younger woman. Murderers. Conspirators. Yelling at her. Yelling at each other. But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered because he was dead. Killed. She could still feel the warm splatter of his blood on her face as the woman cajoled her back into the dreaming machine where there was blood and battlefields and she wasn't-_

-pregnant, either. Kassandra listened, heard nothing, and moved to peak around the corner. No one. She pursed her lips, and with a shared glance knew _Giovanni_ was thinking the same thing. Oh, not about his own sudden and miraculous pregnancy or the lingering bruise around his neck. It was only the severe lack of guards they'd encountered in such a large and obviously important, wealthy temple was _unsettling._ Priests and acolytes they'd spied aplenty, at prayer or bustling past on some late night errand, but other than a handful of skeleton patrols there was _nothing._

And if not here, where?

At least the little thief was taking the opportunity to rob the ludicrously wealthy temple blind. Kassandra felt a smile creep onto her face, suddenly struck by the thought of the babe growing in her belly being a girl. The smile died as another thought bubbled up on the back end of the other, of another young girl with olive toned skin and teeth a little too big for her mouth. The thought was jagged, fragmented, and went through her body like wind though a field of grass. The staff was hot in her hands.

“My lady, are you well enough to continue?” The whisper drew her out of the suddenly clear memory; of the street of scattered corpses and _Phiobe._ Oh, Phiobe. How could she have forgotten her? She couldn't remember _why_ or _how_ they had come to be in that street but the phantom feel of Phiobe's cooling body was suddenly so very heavy in her arms.

_A dinner date. A proposal. They'd been using protection, him and her, but no plan survives contact with the enemy. Even family planning. She'd said yes._

_They never made it back to the car. He'd stepped in front of her, in front of a belly that was still more pudge than bump, and they'd killed him for it. Left him lying dead in the street as she kicked and screamed and was forced into the back of a van._

“Well enough.” Kassandra answered the assassin's question, blinking away the wetness in her eyes. The staff pulsed again, a heart she held in her hands, and she scowled at it, “I do not know what you _think_ you are trying to do, but _stop it_ , or I shall send you straight to _Hephaestus.*_ ”

The mercenary doesn't miss the tightening around Ten's, around _Matthew's_ , eyes even as the rest of him stayed open and friendly. It wouldn't bother her, as a misthios she's used to a certain level of suspicion, only Kassandra has seen how quickly and quietly he can take down a man with nothing but his empty hands. His expression stays open, stays _friendly_ , even while he's choking a man to unconsciousness. Out of the corner of her eye she watches him a share a concerned look with _Giovanni_ with the older man giving a slight shake of his head in lieu of any common language between them.

 _Matthew_ doesn't like the godly weapon, she's gathered. If he plans to do anything with that dislike she doesn't know. Like so many other things. She feels like maybe she should be drowning under all the crap she doesn't know, but she's too stubborn.

The Wolf of Sparta raised her to fight, to survive, and what is this but just another cliff?

_A Spartan rises as soon as they have fallen._

As a group they keep moving until the little thief slips her hand into _Giovanni's_ while pointing down a turn that leads to an enclosed garden of some sort. Kassasndra's head throbs as a quick discussion follows and the magic of the staff translates everything right into her ear. There is a distinct tone of petulance to the words she's almost certain was not in original.

 _Giovanni's_ lips thin, a wrinkle forming between his brows. “Hmm. Personal apartments will be more populated. More guarded.”

She rolls her shoulders and the staff pulses once more in her hand. Her tongue feels numb with foreign words. “If it is anything like what we've already seen, not heavily.”

“We do not need the whole of Roma waking up to alarm bells.” The older man gives a little laugh, and though it isn't a happy sound she can see that laughing is what his face was made for. The girl tugs at his hand, impatient, and he sighs while setting the palm of his hand on the pommel of his stolen sword. “Though we _do_ need clothing for the others.”

And it would be more efficient and less distasteful to raid someone's closet than constantly knock out and rob old men, of which there have been fewer and further between. Though it was impossible to keep track of time the darkness below, it's late enough that the hour could be argued to be early. If the temple was being guarded by Spartans, or even Athenians, the guards would be rotating out within the hour.

If the temple was being guarded by Spartans, or even Athenians, she would feel a lot better about everything.

Because then she would know _exactly_ what she needed to do.

They split their forces. _Matthew_ and the girl scrambling up a column artfully wreathed with ivy to slip into windows on the floor above. _Giovanni_ and herself continue on to a towered section that is somehow more ostentatious than the rest. Paintings and tapestries cover the finery that is the walls themselves. Athens _might_ have been able to afford such luxury, but only if they stopped investing in their navy and increased tithes from their allied states by a factor of ten.

Her mercenary heart couldn't decided if it should be appalled at the waste or jealous of the ability.

She nearly ran into _Giovanni's_ backside as the man came to an abrupt stop, spine seemingly straightening into another person as he did so. Dark eyes glinted beneath the stolen helm as he eyed her staff. “My Lady, please remain here, hidden, until I call I for you. If I am right the apartments of the Captain-General are up ahead, and they will protected only second to the Holy Father himself.”

“I am perfectly capable of defending myself... _Assassin._ ” Because though he never said it, there was only one type of killer that moved as he did. Though in war times a misthios often killed for coin, and may just as often do so in times of peace, the way they went about it was different than a specialist.

Unfortunately, _Giovanni_ didn't react to the barb in any way she could see. “I do not doubt your skill, only your weapon of choice is a fair bit lacking in subtlety.”

The sound of tired, armored feet drifted down the staircase. How many feet she was unsure, and her awareness of her companion's absence burned like bile in the back of her throat. She could not deny the man had a point. Her one real attempt at disguise and subterfuge had nearly killed her. If not for Alexios, if not for their shared blood...

“ _What's wrong now, Miss Stillman? The memories acquired from Subject Fourteen suggested this_ Eagle Bearer _came into contact with several Artifacts. If we can find an Apple now we may not need to bother with finding a descent of_ The _Eagle.”_

“ _I don't know, Warren. She's cooperating, it's something with the Animus. It's having difficulties separating out the memories.”_

“ _This hasn't been a problem before!”_

“ _The Animus has never had to read two distinct genetic sources at once before! And I think the father shared an ancestor with Fifteen, which is making it even more difficult to distinguish between mother and child.”_

“ _Need I remind you that we are on a clock? Figure it out, Miss Stillman.”_

 _..._ she would have died in that chamber beneath Apollo's temple. At the same time she could not just leave the staff for anyone to pick up. She crossed her arms and gestured to the stairs. “Fine, fine. But if I hear anything-!”

Grim confidence answered her. “You won't.”

He bowed and vanished up the stairs, every step a soldier. So different from the way he walked when he thought no one was looking. Words were exchanged, Kassandra could hear that much even if the meaning was lost by the speaker's distance from the Staff's influence. The boots these people wore were as heavy as their steps and it was not difficult to track the tread of men coming toward the stairs.

She tucked herself into the thin shadow formed in the joining of wall and staircase, willing herself into concealment with a delirious prayer to Aphrodite Areia as she held the staff close in a two handed grip. Her eyes tingled and the mercenary grit her teeth as the slight sounds of shifting metal and cloth rose around her ears. For a short moment she thought she could see a faint haze of human forms flashing through the walls but with a pained wince it was gone.

Ikaros was gone.

Two men dressed in black and red dismounted the stairs, passing by her position unawares, eyes sliding right over her shoddily hidden form. One of them yawned, murmuring something about missing out on glory and sleep. Once they moved into the darkness and out of her range Kassandra released the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Energy poured out along with the breath in her lungs and she had to stand still as her heart pounded in her head. Her palms were sweaty and her knees suddenly weak as though a fever had set in.

Maybe, just maybe, _Matthew_ was right to be distrustful of the thing. It felt similar to her grandfather's spear, but it was not _hers_.

“This is your last warning, behave _.”_

The gods were, at times, more human than humanity and fickle as the shifting winds. Shaking her head to clear it, Kassandra crouched low and made her way to the next level. She could smell blood. Of _Giovanni_ there was no sign but a thin line of yellow firelight coming from beneath a door. One wall was lined with arching windows that looked out over an expansive city.

 _Roma._ They said. This was Rome? Somehow she felt it should be different, though the reason behind the feeling escaped her. She hadn't been to Rome before now. She hadn't a need to. A soft gurgle gave her cause to look down and below the window, hidden among carefully curated grasses was a crumpled body in guardsman dress.

Not _Giovanni_. He was too short, skin too pale.

Turning away from the sight of the strange city, Kassandra headed for the door with the light. She pushed against the heavy wood, instinct and a glint of metal had her raising the godly staff to block a blow from the halberd that the temple guards seemed to favor. However, the two weapons did not connect stopping mere inches from each other.

“I asked you to wait, Madonna Kassandra.” _Giovanni_ sighed, pulling back and propping his new weapon against a beleaguered desk. Propped against a standing shelf was a set of corpses, blood pooling from a slit throat and bubbling out between surprised lips. The Assassin looked as though he'd aged years in the minutes they'd been apart. Weariness had banked the anger that had been in him. She stepped around the bodies, careful not to get blood on her still bare feet, and examined the contents of the shelf. There were books and... things. Gleaming, glittering things.

She picked up a hinged bauble that opened like a clam shell. Inside was the painted image of a woman. The detail was remarkable. She slipped it into the folds of fabric at her waist. “I got bored.”

“Poor patience makes for a poor Assassin.” Giovanni said the words with the route cadence of a long suffering teacher. He shuffled papers, eyes pinched as he continued reading missives that were written in Minoan for all she knew. The symbols tickled her mind as though she'd seen similar before, but even the number system was off.

Resolutely deciding not to think about the gaps in her own knowledge, she raised a finger, “Not an Assassin, _Giovanni_ , a Mercenary.” She lowered her pointing finger onto a discarded page. “What is this?”

“Letters. Orders. Reports.” Curt. Angry. _Tired._ He slapped a sheaf of papers down on the desk, the force scattering the rest like feathers from a pierced pillow. “1499. A Spaniard sits the Holy See and the _Duke of Valentinois_ commands the Papal Army.”

“...so?”

 _Giovanni_ grit his teeth, staring at her, and plucked one paper from many. It was of lesser quality material, more like what she occasionally saw posted on town boards, and bore the image of a man in a hood. The artist hadn't gotten the face quite right, it wasn't half so lifelike as the portrait at her waist, and there were holes in that paper that had clearly come from a knife but there was a certain vague resemblance. Perhaps if _Giovanni's_ cheeks were more rounded with youth and his face less familiar with joy.

The Assassin ran a hand through his hair, the occasional gray strand catching firelight like silver. With a sigh he opened his eyes and they were burning once more. She turned the picture in her hands as Giovanni's attention went back to the desk with a single minded intensity.

Drawers slid open, ink pots wreathed in gold and feathers of a large bird were deftly set aside. More papers, some in leather bindings, a small pouch of dark, heavy stones, maps. The misthios grinned. It was only on the very bottom edge of the marked up map, but Kephallonia was unmistakable.

That was oddly reassuring.

Trading the bounty notice for the map she carefully folded the large paper along old creases and tucked it away. Her ally pushed back from mess he'd made, muttering to himself, eyes sweeping the room. Large scrolls of paper bound with ribbon waited on a table across the room. Silvery swords hung mounted beneath a plaque and a _child's toy_ of all things, roughly cut and incredulous among all the finery, sat pride of place beneath the blades.

Truthfully, _Giovanni_ reminded her of Barnabas.

Baranbas never spoke of it after that first time she saved his life, but by the way he looked at her at night, the way he would watch her with Ikaros while they sailed, as much as told her he'd never shed his belief. Sent by the gods, indeed.

Her hands clenched. The metal was hot. There was, unmistakably, a god resting within the building. One that had on wings of midnight plucked them from Hades grasp. But for what purpose? The priest believed there was none, that it has likely been whim, which was entirely possible but... Kassandra shook her head to clear away the thoughts before another headache could start.

He also claimed that Kassandra was not Kassandra, and that was just madness.

The sound of splintering wood drew her attention, and Kassandra looked up to see that _Giovanni_ had completely removed a drawer from the desk, breaking some sort of locking mechanism as he did so. Flipping the drawer over, and causing a flew last remainders of quill cuttings and stray coin to fall out, he began tapping the bottom. By the faint hollow sound of the wood it was a false bottom.

Victory bore teeth and muttered, “No man with power is clean. _Everyone_ has something to hide...” Examining the trick-drawer proved neither the true nor false bottom did not slide out. They could be broken, probably, the wood by necessity was not thick but splitting it might damage whatever was concealed. “Hmm. I wonder...”

 _Giovanni_ reached for one of the many quills strewn about in his search. Though, now that she considered it there was an unusual amount of feathers for one man's study.

Her eyes widened as he slid the hollow shaft slid into what she would have thought a particularity of the grain. A soft click and the false bottom released, coiled metal lifting the light wood and revealing yet more papers. Different papers, down to the texture and the broken seals upon them.

A soft knocking sounded, a pattern that tickled some distant memory, and the door swung open once more. Kassandra lowered the staff as the little thief walked in, gilded to her fingertips in liberated jewels, while _Matthew_ was hidden behind the pile of spartan red cloth he carried.

Grinning, the girl opened her mouth to gloat but only got a single syllable out before the sound of crumpling paper interrupted her.

“Monteriggioni.” _Giovanni's_ breath was deep, slow, and obviously forced. His hands were shaking and knuckles white where they crushed the formerly hidden communications. “The bastards are going after _Monteriggioni_.”

* * *

“ _The bottle-O! The bottle-O! The sailor loves his bottle-O!”_

Hands clapped in time to the beat as thick, hardy glasses clinked in solidarity.

“ _So early in the morning the sailor likes his bottle-O!”_

Bright, fascinated eyes watched bottles of differing shapes and sizes sail through the air as smoothly as a ship on fair winds. With each verse another joined the dance, distributing their cargo to empty cups held in respect and confused veneration.

“ _A bottle of rum, a bottle of gin, a bottle of Irish-Whisky-O!”_

The latest round of drinks was ferried off into the crowd with wide, gap toothed smiles. Desmond swayed and hummed along with the singing pirates, letting the chorus of rough voices and stomping feet curl around him like a possessive cat as he reached behind his back to catch the last bottle. He wasn't exactly sure when one Kenway turned into two pirates. Then three. Then... Desmond peered into the crowd of bodies, squinting for a moment before his eye twinged a warning. Several more than three, anyway. Desmond supposed it didn't matter, and even if he couldn't carry a tune worth a damn the man in the overly embroidered vest and scarves was more than willing to try Desmond's more colorful cocktails. Which meant all his other... guests? Patrons? Figments of imagination?

Whatever. Everyone else became more adventurous with their drink choices, though most still went for the basics, straight. The comfort of familiarity, maybe. At least it wasn't boring; everyone having stories to tell and loudly at that. All in all, it was... _nice._ It was... _homey._ If Desmond ever thought he'd had a home that felt like it, it was back with Bad Weather. He'd had friends, he'd had stability, he'd been content, and after years of hiding from his father's _death_ _cult_ yet seeing no sign of them or of anything like he'd been taught to fear, constantly, as a kid... Desmond downed a drink of his own. Strawberry popped along his taste buds as the beer went down. No one brewed -brews?- like monks brew, that was his truth and he was sticking to it.

Now if he could remember how that saying went. Whiskey is risky but liquor is quicker... no... beer before wine and you'll feel fine?

He felt more than saw his bar door swing open. Drawn by the music, a pudgy man and an almost too fancily dressed woman spilled into his domain with the strangest expressions on their faces. What Desmond was sure had started as Edward simply slapping the bar to keep time with the world's oldest metronome turned into... this _._ Desmond smiled to himself as he watched two happily drunk men swerve to avoid the newcomers as they embraced each other, their drinks abandoned in the frantic reunion. There was something familiar about that, some word or phrase that drifted just out of sight like a will-o-wisp in a bog. He could catch it, if he looked...

His eyes slid back over to Edward, who laughed at something one of the other pirates was saying before noticing Desmond's attention and ambling over. It was the only word that fit, wasn't it? _Amble._ The easy confidence, the relaxed cheer, with his hood down and face bare the blond looked _good._ He looked younger, too, than when he had first wandered into the Eagle's Rest with his shoulders tight and expression carefully neutral.

Desmond felt his own face grow warm as Edward leaned against the bar, elbows digging into the dark wood and slouching forward as though bones were suggestions rather than a rule. It made the blond very slinky. Like a big leopard was staring up at him. Smirking at him. Desmond risked a quick peek into his glass. The last time he felt like this was before Abstergo. Right before. Desmond turned his head keeping his ancestor in the very corner of his vision and risked his Sight. Edward _blazed_ Gold. The Gold of Important. The Gold of Information. The Gold of an Assassination Mark. But at the same time the pirate was a riot of the color, spun together in a knot of humanity, small traces of blue and red leaking out and shooting off into the distance. Threads in a tapestry. Desmond's eyes watered as his head _throbbed_ , and he clenched them shut while draining his glass to the foamy dregs.

“Oi, are you alright?” Edward asked, spine stiffening in concern.

“Yeah, I'm fine.” It was a stupid thought, anyway. He was dead. No one looked for a dead man. There were no Templars in his bar. No wanna-be gods. That was, like, his _one_ rule. Everything is Permitted; Except Egomaniacal Assholes. He should get a sign. “I could ask the same of you, though. Not going to join the festivities?”

“Not quite yet, I think.” Edward's lips twisted into a grin as he half-turned, one arm still braced against the bar and the other bent to keep his drink from spilling all over his nice blue-white robes. The pirate raised his glass to the pudgy man and got a wide grin and wiggling fingers in return. “With Bonnet here, that makes Mary the only one left.”

The grin died, and Edward's voice took on a softer tone, the whisper almost lost against the raucous of those celebrating. “She should be here. She said. She'd always...”

“Hey.” Desmond set his drink aside and waved off an approaching woman with hair like fire. He reached over and gripped his ancestor's arm. “It's okay, man.”

Blue eyes tracked to the coal-black hand that squeezed Edward's arm in comfort. The man's adam apple bobbed as he swallowed, and Desmond fought the instinct to lean back as that first expression of hidden fear returned to the pirate. Fear, and awe, and _longing._ And he could hear not words, but thoughts, a storm of emotions that ceased only when he reflexively released the man's arm out of self-preservation.

“Can you, could you find her?” Edward asked in a rush, catching Desmond's retreating hand in both of his and sending the bartender on a mental roller coaster. “Please?”

 _He thinks I'm going to kill him. Or banish him. Or-_ Desmond's thoughts stuttered under the onslaught of emotions and the image, faded like an ill-preserved painting, burst into his mind. Lips touched with blood, eyes like warm earth. _Mary Read._ “No, er, no! Yes? Maybe? Just-”

“ _Please._ ” Edward's grip was crushing, and yet it paled in comparison to the pulse in his head, just behind his eye.

“Okay.” Desmond sighed, as the world narrowed to just the two of them. Sound dulled, people lost focus until it was just two men standing awkwardly in a haze of grey. Edward was his ancestor, and it wasn't like there was half as much distance between them as between Desmond and Altaïr. “Okay.”

Clay had managed to create an animus within an animus, hadn't he?

Looking into Edward's eyes, and the mingled fear and hope, Desmond thought it couldn't be much different from riding a bike. And he could see it. It _hurt_ but he could see the thread that was Mary intersecting with the thread that was Edward. Golden, both of them, and possibilities spiraling out from that duo like fractals in a snowflake. If she'd given up on Edward he would have – no. Best, best not to think about that.

Really, it was exactly like riding a bike.

* * *

The smell was the first thing Desmond noticed. Which, in hindsight, made sense as of the five senses smell was the strongest tied to memory. And yet it was the only thing the animus hadn't been able to simulate properly. There was too much nuance in a scent, too much information that was felt more than seen, and even if it wouldn't have overclocked the processors Desmond would have been the only one to benefit from it. You couldn't see a smell.

It was part of the reason bleeding effect hallucinations were so compelling even when he knew they couldn't possibly be real. Without an animus filtering what the brain saw, the _smell_ came through brightest of all. The blurring scent of horses and fresh hay from a stable, the lingering perfume of a woman, the musk of beautiful man clinging to bedding, the mingled odor of leather and dust from a long journey...

Though the current combo of piss and shit Desmond could do without, even if it was mitigated by the hay he was currently buried under. Activating eagle vision, which was always a trip with his eyes closed to keep from being poked by errant straws, showed him to be in some sort of dungeon-prison place with hazy red forms walking in lazy patrols. His limbs trembled with a bone-deep weariness as he shook his head free from the Sight, keeping only the awareness of the guards.

Settling in for a wait, the second thing Desmond noticed was how thirsty he was. How his very skin ached with every movement. That _wasn't_ something the animus mimicked well. Pain and recovery was the sort of thing that was dulled, for Desmond's own mental health, and blurred for the sake of time. Hell, when Al Mualim stabbed Altaïr it wasn't the pain of the blade that Desmond remembered as much as the emotional sting of betrayal. And that trauma had only been magnified with Al Mualim's, with _Rashid's_ , final reveal.

Desmond could relate. Granted he never killed Bill in a final battle for control over his own damn mind, but there were times it was a close thing. Granted, Bill didn't have ancient device gifted super powers, but between Juno in his ear and ancestors in his skull Desmond had been losing bits of himself for awhile. Come to think of it, why was he doing this, again?

“Focus, Miles.” Desmond whispered under his breath, head bowed and eyes closed as he continued to track the bodies of _threat_ that marched past his position. He ignored the tremble that ran down his spine, what once might have been a warning from the animus for going outside the parameters of the memory, and surged out of the safety of the hay. All he had was a pair of hidden blades.

Business as usual, then.

In the space between breaths he gripped the guard by the jaw, his hand covering the man's mouth, and pressed the guardsman to his body as his hidden blade sunk past the folds of a uniform. Desmond fell backward into the hay stack, the weight of the near-corpse all too familiar, and waited. Within seconds the man's heart finished bleeding into the red of his coat and with careful, habitual movements Desmond checked his pockets.

With how little the man had on him, Desmond almost felt bad.

_Wait, no, you're dead. I'm dead. We don't actually need... the fuck kind of coins are these?_

Lack of pockets was apparently an issue, and with another tremor through his exhausted body the coins fell from his hand. The straw dulled sound of metal hitting the floor, but it was still enough to alert the second guard who upon finding his partner missing shouted alarm.

Desmond sighed and rolled out of the hay. A sword flashed down, sparks flashing as it struck the stone floor, and Desmond kicked at the attached wrist as he stood. The sword went clattering into the shadows of the dungeon and the guard gurgled at the hidden blade suddenly lodged in his throat. As the body crumpled Desmond was already turning on his heel, the sound of good boots pounding on the ground causing an irrational flash of jealously to ripple through him, and he raised his arm to block the downward swing of the narrowed-eyed guard coming at him.

They dueled to the distant mutterings of either a drunk or a madman, maybe both.

The guard wasn't bad. Certainly a step above the usual fresh-off-the-street thugs Ezio had to deal with on a daily basis. And Desmond was _tired._ Each clash of blades left his arms shaking just a tiny bit more and his movements just a bit less sure. His opponent kept his sword between himself and Desmond, kept himself in a sideways stance to minimize the target presented, and from the determined glint in his eye knew that it was only a matter of time before Edward's beaten down body failed him.

Assuming Edward continued to fight with his hidden blades, which put him at a distinct reach disadvantage.

Desmond dived back into the hay to the guard's angry cursing. Then, before the man could proceed with the traditional stabbing of the hay pile leapt out holding the rapier from his first kill, and locked swords. Grinning in a way that was all Edward, Desmond risked breaking the stalemate. He let himself be pushed back, and before the guard caught on to the ploy Desmond raised his leg in a sharp kick to the man's groin. He crumpled to his knees, and another swift kick scattered teeth like pearls before swine as wheezing breaths left the unconscious guardsman laid out as so much meat.

His unshorn feet pulsed with pain and the freezing stone floor became a mercy.

Desmond, _Edward_ , wavered then. Tired, hurting, and with a choice to make. Edward swallowed, the dryness of his throat making even that action painful, and knelt down to sink his hidden blade home. They wandered over to a man rocking behind rust -or maybe blood- covered bars. “Hello, Vane.”

Edward's voice continued to rumble out soft and unacknowledged. The scent of piss was thicker in the cage, and as Edward turned to leave Desmond found himself nailed in place, staring. There was a moment of the world feeling stretched; a sensation of vertigo momentarily overwhelming everything else. The madman looked different without his coat, without his _sanity_ , but he knew the guy in the cell. Under the dirt and sweat and sunken eyes this was the man that kept asking for the Flaming Dr. Peppers.

“Hey, man.” Stupid, in hindsight, but not an hour ago Desmond had been swapping stories with the pyro. And he had been _happy_. Nothing was real, of course, simulation or hallucination, one or the other, but dammit he didn't want to _see_ this. It was Sixteen all over again. Worse than. Desmond crouched down the guy's level and reached out. “It's gonna be... o... kay?”

His hand passed straight through the bars. Not slipped between them, but through them, like some sort of glitch. And it was Desmond's hand he was staring at; not Edward's. 17th century pirates didn't have fleece. “What... the... fuck?”

“Fly.” The man's head suddenly shot up, eyes as yellow as his teeth, and he spit at the frantic speed of his words as he crawled forward. As he gripped the bars of his cell his knuckles turned white. “Fly, on the fires of creation. Fly! Fly! Fly!”

“Jesus Christ!” Desmond backpedaled and ran, shadows rippling in his wake, passing another dead guard along the way. Had Edward gone on ahead without him? That was _not_ how an animus worked.

_But it isn't an animus._

Desmond idly noted the glint of a boot buckle in the shadows of a supply closet left haphazardly ajar. He heard a scream as he rounded the next corner, the clash of metal on metal, and picked up his pace jumping over a pair of still bleeding corpses to enter the next chamber. By then it's instinct to climb the stack of crates and woven sacks rather than go around, and the view he's presented with for the action is, well, it's something. Edward is fighting. And it's different, being on the outside. There were a handful of instances where he'd observed his ancestors instead of riding along through their memories, but nothing like this.

Desmond launches off the stacked supplies and lands on a wooden beam, gaze not once leaving the action as he stalks above them. There's a woman in the cell Edward's fighting in front of, another in the one next to that, and Edward gets _vicious_ the longer the fight goes on. He's like a cornered animal, really, and not at his best. Desmond can feel the echos of the strain. His bones rattle in sympathy with every block, and he can't stop the wince as the blade of the second guard comes close enough to scatter scarlet droplets on the wall.

“Edward!”

Desmond jumps down, feet passing forcefully onto and then _into_ his ancestor as he resettles under the desperate pirate's skin. What he does next is not an Edward move, he knows that even as the tired muscles try and fail to fight him, but it isn't out of the realm of possibility. Of all his ancestors Ezio was the best at dual wielding hidden blades, so that's what Desmond leans on.

He redirects the next attack, his shorter blade sliding and sparking along the steel sword of the guard attacking his front. He doesn't get to finish the man before he's sliding out of the way of the man attacking their back. It's a dance, at that point, leading one opponent into the path of the other. Conserving his own energy and letting them expend theirs. Desmond spots a hooded figure slinking it's way down the hall and stifles a snort of amusement. In the split second of distraction Edward closes his fist and punches one guard in the nose, the change in tactics surprising even Desmond before the bloody nosed guard gets hurled toward the approaching Assassin.

Desmond doesn't witness the man's death. He's too busy turning and slapping aside the next attack so he can turn all his attention on the last guard.

At that point the poor bastard doesn't last long, and when Desmond looks up from where he'd driven his blade into the man's eye sockets he's caught in the oddly _considering_ gaze of the Assassin.

Desmond feels their mouth move. “Mary.”

Edward rips the key from the corpse at their feet and goes to unlock the cell. The woman inside is clutching at her abdomen, eyes glassy. It's not the Mary Read Edward held in his memories. Desmond feels his stomach flip. “Mary. It's me, Edward.”

They cup her cheek, and it's warm. Too warm for the stone floor of the prison and the thin garments she's been given. Mary's voice is little more than a whisper. “Edward?”

“Edward!” Anne calls, high and strained but _demanding_ , “Who's this fella?”

“It's all right Anne, he's a friend, what's wrong with Mary?” The brunette's head lolls in his hand, breathing labored. They look to the side to see the red-haired woman supported by the Assassin, her own body trembling. The woman grits her teeth at the sight of them, or maybe pain. The pale, rough spun dress she's wearing does absolutely nothing to hide the swell of her own belly.

“She's ill.”

 _No shit Sherlock_ , thinks Desmond. What comes out of Edward's mouth is, “And her child?”

“They took her... no idea where.” The words leave a chill in Edward's chest, and Desmond's too. Yet, somehow, it isn't the least bit surprising. Destroying families is what Templars do. If it even was Templars. If Mary gave birth in her cell, like what it looked like Anne had been expected to do, the infant might not have survived at all. Despite the fresh hay someone had put down it still smelled like shit and piss and blood.

But the not knowing, the not _knowing_ was the worst.

“Can you walk?” Edward asked, leaning down to help the delirious woman up. “Lean on me, Mary, come on.”

“I can't.” Mary's body was a line of impossible heat against them, each breath sounding like it had been punched from her chest. They walked, steps agonizingly slow, and pained, and slowing still. Desmond could hear guards, far too many to fight, approaching.

“Come on, that's it. You're alright.” It was a wish, a prayer, a lie _._

 _She dies here._ Desmond thought as he drifted along in his ancestor's skin. _This is his last memory of her._

Yet, she still glimmered with importance.

Mary tripped over her feet and stumbled to a wall, taking Edward with her. “Stop, stop please.”

“I ain't leaving you, dammit, lift your arm!”

 _I'm not leaving you, either._ They could see the exit; a line of warm sunlight against the cold stones of the prison. The Assassin had left it unlocked and open for them. It was a short sprint for a healthy man. An easy bid for freedom for an Assassin.

“It's no good.” Mary coughed.

She was right, dammit, she was _right._ Even if they made the door, how were they supposed to get by the rest of the guards? It wouldn't be just one or two on patrol, but an entire base of them. Lookouts and gunmen.

Edward scooped her up, anyway, as his own body screamed at him. “I ain't leaving you nowhere, no way.”

“Put me down, Edward. Don't die on my account. Go.” She didn't look at them, but at the cracked door. Hair stuck to her face with sweat. Edward's hand balled into a fist on the floor.

“You're such a pain in the ass.” His breath caught in his throat, like a rock of anguish choking the tears that needed to fall. “Dammit! You should have been the one to outlast me.”

“I've done my part. Will you?”

“If you came with me, I could.” _Don't give up. Please._ “Mary!”

“I'll be with you, Kenway. I will.” Desmond feels when Edward swallows that thing of pain, taking it inside and brooding over it like an oyster its pearl. Mary's eyes flutter shut, breathing thinner and thinner as they stubbornly pick her up.

With one last exhale her heart gives out, and Desmond looks down at the golden woman in his arms. His ancestor flees with a corpse. She deserved better. Mary shudders, brown eyes opening wide in alarm at something over Desmond's shoulders. She seemed to shrink in on herself like a winding spring. “What are you?”

Desmond turns to track her gaze and frowns when he can't find anything but stone and shadows. He probably looks stupid spinning in circles with a woman in his arms. “Oh. Um. I'm Desmond. Hi.”

She squirms a bit in his hold, checking her rapidly graying out surroundings with the first clear head she must have had in days. Her clothing flickers, coat and breeches transposing themselves over the feminine undergarments of the period. The heavy handle of a pistol digs uncomfortably between his ribs and her hip. “And _what_ is a Desmond?”

Isn't that the million dollar question? He hums, shifting his grip as slender arms wrap around his neck and shoulders in surprise.

“A bartender.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Staff is HALPING. Why Kassandra no like it? *Staff cries in a corner*
> 
> Desmond's bit actually got written first, and came pretty easily. He evidently wanted a chapter all to himself but I was like, no, there is a plan! And Kassandra was then like, nope. I don't want to talk to anyone. This place is weird. She also is probably being heavily influenced by my own play through of the game. Because I can't stealth for shit. Or I try, but then I get spotted by one asshole and suddenly every rando guard/huntress/bear is on my ass. Which is fine until the other Mercenaries that are like three levels above me show up and then I am so dead. Have not actually finished the game yet. I cannot express how much I loath the 'slow mo' feature. Because it always happens when I'm in the middle of finishing blow and thus cannot move to take advantage of it.
> 
> As a bit of lore, yes Desmond totally just time traveled as a bodiless spirit and possessed his ancestor to help him out of a jam. Point: Isu didn't realize the power of Human Belief until it was too late to take advantage of it. Point: Isu were not a united force, see Minerva/Juno. Point: Jupiter tapped a lot of ass. Result: Post-Flare Isu plans are trapped in a Gambit Pileup.


End file.
